Yeah I can reconcile being depressed real badI'm a thinker, not a drinker, but still I Hennessy dragAlcohol numbs the pain like when novocaine stabsin your arteries, pardon me but my city go madVia Compton California, corners with coroners and karma on 'emColors corresponding to gangs upon usCommon corrupted Crip and Pirus cripple the cityTriple the crime, Bible nor the Qur'an can saveWelcome, don't be afraid, your city similar right?Where the choppers kidnap the night and police silence your rightsStare at the sky, wonder will you live to see twenty-five?I'm twenty-two, at twenty I knew I was against the oddsThis kid named Jonathan was monitoringhis momma and sister, his older cousin, he honored himAnonymous bodies on his burner was astonishingTo Johnny, he might have been a modern day rider thenhe walking outside again, he see the lifestyle of an active memberPull out a MAC-11, now his eyes is bigFascinated by mayhem, what's his cousin to say now?He wanna be from the hood that he's from and that's onemore gangster under the family tree, took 'em under his (wings) like KFCCrip crazy, rocking matching T-shirts that says "the hood made me"No love, just spread slugs, that's the policy, the leader and the prodigyNow shorty doo-wop, holding a oowop, hanging with rah-rahswith blah-blahs that sit on the block catching fades and licksGoing on missions with lunatics, a ninth-grade menaceThugging for six months, smoking like six blunts an hourThe power of banging, he was walking from... [gunshots]Little Johnny

[Outro: Malcolm X (Kendrick Lamar)]"I think you'll find, sir, that there will come a timewhen black people wake up and become intellectually independent enough to think for themselvesas other humans are intellectually independent enough to think for themselvesThen the black man will think like a black man and he will feel for other black peopleand this new thinking and feeling will cause black people to stick togetherAnd then at that point you'll have a situationwhere when you attack one black man, you are attacking all black menand this type of black thinking will cause all black people to stick togetherAnd this type of thinking also will bring an endto the brutality inflicted upon black people by (black people)And it is the only thing that will bring an end to itNo federal court, state court or city court will bring an end to itIt's something that the black man has to bring an end to"